RESEARCHERS PURSUE SOFTWARE'S "HOLY GRAIL"
Computer scientists at companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun
Microsystems and Lucent Technologies are beginning to pursue the
industry's next great software challenge: universal virtual machines
(UVMs). Working with researchers at Taligent, IBM is developing a
single virtual machine capable of running applications written in C++,
Smalltalk or Java, according to IBM's VP of application development
marketing: "I can't say exactly when we'll get there, but it is
something we expect to be able to do. You have to look at it from our
perspective: With all the languages we support, we need this to
happen." Once developed, a universal virtual machine would, in
theory, allow developers to write an application in any language and
run it on any system. Officials at Sun, which developed the Java
Virtual Machine, said the concept of a virtual machine for multiple
languages is intriguing. "The question we are trying to figure out is
where would we use it and how would we use it," says a SunSoft
marketing director. "What happens to C or C++ in Java virtual
machines? We're still trying to figure that out." (InfoWorld Electric
4 Apr 97)